


Protect Him from the Harm of the World

by locketofyourhair



Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: M/M, pre-serum steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-28
Updated: 2012-07-28
Packaged: 2017-11-10 22:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/locketofyourhair/pseuds/locketofyourhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a fear growing under Bucky’s ribs that they’re going to enter the new mess in Europe and Bucky will have to go, and Steve won't be there when he comes back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Protect Him from the Harm of the World

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kink bingo, washing/cleaning. I tried to read up on the pre-Pearl Harbor opinions about America joining WW2 and have Bucky's own opinions reflect that.

Their apartment shares a kitchen with Miss McDougal, but there is no bathroom. There’s only one per floor, and the water is always freezing. 

“It will be worth it, Buck. Two bedrooms,” Steve said when they looked at the place. The second bedroom was so small that there was only room for a mattress and all Steve’s clothes would have to be kept in the tiny living room, but there were two bedrooms.

No one asked questions about them staying together, though Bucky sometimes thinks McDougal knows. She lost her fiance in the Great War, and she cries for him often, but sometimes she makes a plate of cookies and shares them with Bucky when Steve is at work. 

“That boy reminds me of my John,” she says, and there’s something in the tone of her voice that lets Bucky know she knew. It wasn’t disapproval or disgust, just a tone to make Bucky understand that she knew about him and Steve. “Is always going to need looking after. I think John would have made it if I could have gone to France with him.”

Bucky squeezes his hand around glass of water. He wants to say that Steve is fine, that he doesn’t get so sick that he’s up half the night coughing, and that there’s this fear growing under Bucky’s ribs that they’re going to enter the new mess in Europe and Bucky will have to go. He’ll have to leave, and if he comes home, some wild disease will have killed Steve. 

It’s a private fear, and he doesn’t bring it up, even with someone who seems to understand. It’s still not safe. He doesn’t want to cost them their home. 

“A lot of guys would have been better to have their dames with them,” he says instead and he gives her a smile that he knows breaks hearts. She laughs and gets up to refill his glass. 

When Steve gets home, he thinks about Steve never coming through that door again, about staying in a cold trench with thirty guys he barely knows and getting a letter in Miss McDougal’s steady hand that Steve passed in the night. He was comfortable. She watched him. It’s a punch in the gut, made worse when Steve crowds into Bucky’s space, mindful of the windows. 

He kisses Steve back and turns the radio off. The announcer sounds like everything is going great in Europe, but there’s no disguising the fact that the president has extended service and they all had to turn in their information. It’s going to be worse, and Bucky knows, with terrifying clarity, that he’s going to have to go.

“It’s raining,” Steve says, when he pulls back, and he is soaked through to the bone. “I would have been home earlier, but I wanted to wait out the storm.”

“And then it started to get dark,” Bucky says, and he runs his hand over Steve’s sopping hair. “You need to get warmed up and dressed, Steve.”

Steve gives a lazy half-smile. “I was kind of thinking I’d just dry off.”

Bucky wants to just go with that, but Miss McDougal’s in his head and the fear won’t leave him. He’s seen Steve get sick from his hair being wet, from the chill. “You need a warm bath,” he says, and he hates that there’s just the shade of something to his voice. 

Steve’s eyes narrow. “Buck, you okay?” But he takes off his shirt and begins hunting around for his robe. He knows Bucky’s right, even if he doesn’t like it.

“Yeah.” Bucky watches Steve fumble out of his clothes. Normally, he likes seeing Steve undress. He likes seeing his pale skin exposed, but now he sees the frailness of the bones, the hollows in his chest. 

Steve raises his eyebrows, but he doesn’t say anything. He starts rummaging for the robe he wears to the bathroom. Bucky can see he’s shivering already. 

There’s never any hot water in the bathroom. 

Bucky touches Steve’s shoulders. “Make sure the windows are all covered. I’ll be back.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, and he’s exasperated. There’s blue ink on the corner of his chin, smudged from the rain and Bucky can’t resist touching it, smearing it just a bit more, when he kisses Steve.

“It’ll be okay,” Bucky says, and he leaves Steve to go back into the kitchen. Miss MacDougal’s door is closed and the stove is cool. It doesn’t matter. 

They have an old pasta pot that used to belong to Steve’s mother. He fills it to the brim with the cold water from their tiny sink and sets it on the stove. He feels exhausted, worn thin. He’s barely twenty-one, but Steve is the one constant in his life. 

He should tell Steve that Miss MacDougal knows, but it would kill Steve. Bucky doesn’t look it, but Steve gets it a lot. He gets the shit kicked out of him for not backing down, and they call him queer while they’re doing it, worse if Bucky steps in because it has to mean _something_ to help someone as small as Steve not get killed. They’ve been chased before, and Steve has trouble out running them.

The water is starting to steam, and that’s warm enough. He lifts it off the stove and carries it into the apartment. He sets it on the bare wood floor, and the wood is so scratched and ruined already he doesn’t care if it makes it worse. One more trip into the kitchen gives him a bowl and a few rags. 

Steve is staring at the pot with an amused expression. “I can wash my own hair, Bucky.” Bucky remembers Steve’s mom washing their hair like this, over the sink with a warm pot of water. She looked after Bucky sometimes, when his dad was sick and his mom had to work. He remembers her nails scraping over his scalp. 

“We may be poor,” she’d say in her rolling accent. “But we don’t have to look like urchins, right, boys?”

They’d both say “Aye,” and she’d give them a cookie to split when they were clean.

“Get a towel and sit,” Bucky says, and he goes to get the soap. They had shampoo once, but it was an unnecessary expense. 

Steve sits by the pot and he rolls his eyes at Bucky. “This isn’t necessary. It’s colder than getting a quick wash down the hall.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, and he kisses Steve, one hand threading into his damp hair. “Trust me. I can keep you warm.”

Steve laughs against Bucky’s mouth and he pushes him away. “Give it your best shot,” he says. 

Bucky has Steve lean over the pot so he can pour the water down over Steve’s drying hair, so the grime from the city is loosened a little. Steve shivers a little, and a stream of water slides down next to Steve’s spine. Bucky hums and leans down to lick that water away.

He rubs the soap through Steve’s short hair, watching the lather build. Steve keeps his neck bowed, eyes closed. It’s harder to wash soap out than it is to wash shampoo. Bucky shields Steve’s eyes with one hand when he starts to rinse his hair. He knows it doesn’t matter and that in this position, it’s almost impossible to keep soap out of your eyes. 

Steve doesn’t seem to mind, kneeling docilely beside Bucky. His skin feels warmer already, and Bucky pretends that it’s from this, from Bucky’s hand moving slowly through Steve’s hair to make sure all the soap is out, their knees pressed together. 

Steve’s eyes stay closed when Bucky guides him up. “How bad is the soap?”

“It’s okay,” Steve says, and he blinks up at Bucky, a half-smile growing on his face. “But you know, I’m kind of cold.”

Bucky laughs. The water is still warm when he fishes the rag out and starts spreading soapy water over Steve’s chest. He circles the rough fabric around Steve’s nipples, just a soft teasing, but Steve is sensitive there, his breath catching in his throat. 

“You warmer yet?” Bucky asks. He watches the soap bubbles pop and fizzle out on Steve’s pale skin, and he can see the flush building. When Steve is turned on, his upper chest starts to pink and then it mottles down along his stomach, a scattering pattern towards his cock. He’s already half hard. 

Bucky rinses the soap away with the same careful strokes, the same teasing. He kisses Steve’s shoulders, the sharp rise of his collar bone. His skin tastes vaguely like the soap, but Bucky doesn’t care. He pushes back the doom and gloom from before, because he has Steve now. He can take care of Steve just like this. 

He rubs the rag over the inside of Steve’s thighs, nudging them apart, and he gives a quick pass over Steve’s dick. It’s perfunctory, just to clean him, but Steve hisses through his teeth. 

Bucky washes Steve’s balls, then up over the curve of his ass to the small of his back where sweat always pools on warm days. He pushes into Steve’s space, one knee between Steve’s. The rain is picking up outside, a steady thudding against their windows, and there’s already the faintest rumble of thunder. It’s the only sound besides their breathing and the dripping of the rag when Bucky rinses it again and again.

When he rubs the soap off Steve’s neck, Steve lunges for him, knocking him onto the floor. Water sloshes out of the pot, soaking Bucky’s shirt to his chest. “I’m clean,” Steve says, and he kisses Bucky with just enough teeth to let Bucky know that he’s sick of the teasing. 

Bucky palms one hand down over Steve’s ass, holding him close.. There’s water seeping into the fabric of Bucky’s pants. “I think I need a bath now,” he says, and he means it to be a joke but there’s a dark serious light to Steve’s eyes. 

“Not yet,” Steve says, his hands pushing Bucky’s shoulders to the floor before he kisses him again. 

Later, Steve falls asleep curled around Bucky’s chest. He has the blankets pulled around his shoulders, and he keeps Bucky close. He cards a hand through Steve’s messy blond hair, and he prays that it can always be like this, that he’s not going to wake up someday to an empty bed and the memory of Steve’s mouth bitter against his.

Steve makes a snuffling sound in his sleep, burrowing closer, and he decides to accept that as a sign.


End file.
